Yellow Hills

On a visit to Southern California’s Carrizo Plain in spring of 2017, there were expanses of wildflowers in all directions. Flowers also flourished outside the park, and this particular landscape along Carrisa Highway (CA 58) impressed me as one of the prettiest. Here’s the view north from the highway, looking across San Diego Creek at private ranchland. These yellow hills are the result of a million hillside daisies (Monolopia lanceolata) blooming in the afternoon sunlight. Hillside daisy is endemic to the southern half of California, where it grows in many types of habitat, including coastal and valley grassland, chaparral, woodland, and desert. The darker blossoms in the meadow are Menzies' fiddleneck (Amsinckia menziesii). I used a polarizing filter over the camera lens to capture the colors as vividly as possible and maximize the contrast between the flowers and the sky.